Observation About Teaching

This season I am having several opportunities to teach workshops to adults. In light of this, I have realized that when teaching people there are two important balances regarding what kinds of things you should say. Before getting into the details, I want to define a couple of words that come up in psychology. Our minds organize data into categories called "schema". When we gain new information that fits in those categories, we are "assimilating" (the new knowledge is similar to what we already know). When we learn something that conflicts with previous knowledge, we must choose whether to reject it, or to "accommodate" it, meaning that we adjust our previous knowledge and schema to allow the new information to come in. There is an important balance related to assimilation and another one for accommodation.

When teaching, there is some value in telling people what they already know, whether to review previous knowledge as a basis for building on it, or to remind them of the importance of something that they have heard before. However, if you are only teaching things that they already know, without getting to new material, they'll get bored. On the other hand, if you are giving too much new content, or if the content is too deep for them, they will not learn much. Basically, you want to stretch the audience, but not too far.

There is also a balance in terms of how much people will agree with you. If you only teach what they agree with, they will not grow much. If you only teach things that they disagree with, they will not be very receptive. When you need to introduce a concept that will likely face resistance, here are a few tips on breaking the ice:
1. Acknowledge in advance that they may not initially agree with this. Don't come across like you're forcing them to believe something.
2. Ask them to explore their previous knowledge of the subject. Ask them why they believe what they currently believe. Ask whether they would still feel the same if certain factors were changed.
3. Introduce the new concept and invite them to ask critical questions about it. While you answer the questions, be sure to give the "why" behind the "what".
4. Show real-life examples of the new concept in action.
5. Rather than asking the students to embrace the entire new concept, ask them which elements of it they think they agree with. Over time, it is possible that they will embrace more elements of it.

Every Challenge is a Mental One

A long time ago, somebody told me that "Every challenge is a mental one". The basic idea is that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. To some extend, I have found this to be true. Motivation makes a huge difference when faced with an unpleasant and huge task.

However, this bit of advice seems steeped in humanism, the belief that people can basically accomplish anything without any help from God. God is our creator, and He is the one who guides the direction of our lives. If we are Christians, we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. With the power of the Holy Spirit, sure, we can accomplish anything that God wants us to do. But we always need to acknowledge this power and not fall into the trap of believing that we can do anything.

Proximity in Internet World

As I write this entry, I am listening to online radio stations on ITunes. I have a favorite station within the Jazz category, but tonight I decided to browse a few others. There are stations from New York, Canada, Iowa, Arizona, Wyoming, and many more. As I browsed several of these, I first felt a sense of awe--"Wow, I'm listening to music all the way from Canada!". Then I realized that it did not matter how far away the station is. With the Internet, basically everything is at our fingertips. It's kind of like being in a room with people from all over the world; talking to any of them is easy since they're all in the same room. This is true with streaming music, pulling up websites, or communicating via e-mail or social networking. In the natural world, some things are close, some are far away. However, you never really have to think about proximity in the Internet world. As I try to wrap my mind around this, I have to look beyond my proximity mindset.

As a children's minister, I am part of a network of children's ministers in the Indianapolis area. We have a Google Group, which we frequently use for asking questions and sharing thoughts. This has been a wonderful experience, and there's no reason that I couldn't join an e-mail network in Orlando or Seattle. In fact, I am a member of a social networking site for children's ministers, and it is exciting to read what other people write.

As exciting as this is, I wonder if there are any downsides to it. For example, if everything in the Internet world is literally at our fingertips, does anyone feel crowded? Do people get sucked into spending way too much time exploring thousands of sites in the Internet world? Do we lose depth of relationships by connecting with 100 people around the world instead of 10 people in our neighborhood?

I've been using the Internet now for about 12 years, increasingly more each year. As I move forward, I expect to continue using the Internet more and more, but I'd still like to avoid the pitfalls of it.

Why Gold?

I was recently watching the movie Treasure Planet (based on the book Treasure Island). The plot of the movie centers around the journey to get a bunch of treasure, with certain characters trying to keep all of it for themselves. Let me ask a question with a possibly obvious answer: Why do they want the gold? Most likely, they want to use it to purchase things. But here's another question: How is it that people can trade gold for anything? Sure, it's a precious metal, and the scarcity of certain things makes them more valuable, but gold in and of itself does not do anything for us. You can't eat it, you can't stay warm with it, etc.

Formal currency (such as dollar bills) seems to be valuable, but only when people are willing to trade something for it. There is a scene in the movie Cast Away where Tom Hanks is stuck on the island and discovers that he has a $100 bill. There is nobody on the island that is selling anything, so the bill does him no good for purchasing. However, he is able to use the bill for something else: starting a fire.

Supposedly, every American bill is backed by gold in the US treasury. So we've got bills and gold, neither of which has any practical use except for trading with others. All this makes me wonder: Why do we trade things like gold and paper bills (which are backed by gold)? So often, the price of an item fluctuates based on the laws of supply and demand, and the relative value of gold or bills changes a lot. I'm guessing that if you trace it back far enough, the only reason that gold (and other precious metals) is valuable is because it looks pretty. Personally, I put more value on things that are functional, not things that look pretty.

I would be very curious to see a society where people trade goods and services. I am talking about a society where the goods that you want to trade have inherent value, and even if nobody buys them, you can use them for yourself. For example, if you have a lot of chickens, and you want to trade some of them for a pig, you could offer to trade with someone who has pigs. You might agree that 20 chickens are equivalent in value to one pig, as long as all the animals are healthy. You could barter over the price a little, but in the end, you're trading goods for goods, and nobody really loses anything. There is no stock market crash, no steady inflation rate, although the laws of supply and demand would probably still be in effect. I don't know whether this kind of society would be superior to the one that we have now, but I'm curious to see how well it would work.

The nice thing about currency is that it is liquid; you can buy anything with it. Sometimes people don't want your goods or services; they want your money. Also, money retains its value over time (aside from inflation) whereas many goods do not last (animals die, food spoils, vehicles rust, etc.).

That's all my thoughts about this. Enjoy.